Wave Issue 18

First...

This is Wave 18 - I can't believe I've been sending out the Niche Surfer newsletter for over four months straight now!

Since we've known each other for many weeks now, I'd like to ask a favor of you.

I don't get much feedback on the newsletter, but I'm always striving to make it better for you. So now I'd like to ask for your feedback.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these emails and how improve it to make it more useful for you.

What would you like more of?
What would you like less of?

Or maybe you think it's great as-is (which is great!), but I'd still love to hear from you on what's working. Then I'll know to keep up with certain things.

In the end, I want to share useful information to help you on your affiliate marketing journey, so do let me know how I can best support you!

Thanks! Yoyao

SEO

New Google Search Console Associations

Google announced a new feature in Search Console named “associations.” Associations lets you connect your Search Console account with other Google accounts, such as YouTube, Google Analytics, Android apps and much more. You can access this feature by clicking here. What are associations.

Google said an “association is a connection between a Search Console property, and some other entity or property in another Google service: for example, between a Search Console property and a Google Analytics account, a YouTube channel, or a Chrome Web Store account.”

I tried it out going to the Associations page and saw that I had YouTube channels already associated with sites. But I hadn't created YouTube channels for those. Interesting.

Google's Associations page gives more information on what data can be see with adding Associations.

One big plus is the ability to connect Domain Properties in GSC to Google Analytics. I don't need to select a specific domain anymore. For example, you previously needed to select one of the combinations of these: https vs http, www vs non-www. Now you can select all with Domain Properties. Not really an issue if you don't use all the combinations. Google says that this will provide more data, so we'll see about that.

The linking with GSC and GA has always been there for specific domains and that provides great information on Search Queries. You can see what search terms your site shows up for in SERPs. GSC limits to seeing only the Top 1000 keywords. Looks like the maximum on GA is 5000.

If you didn't know this connection, go into GSC and create the Association now. Google's just made it easier.

Tools and Resources

Keyword Chef

There's a new cook in the keyword kitchen - Keyword Chef.

Created by Ben Adler, Keyword Chef focuses on finding keywords with real search intent that matters to affiliate marketers.

You'll be able to easily find buyer or informational keywords that are actually useful when it comes to content planning. What I find frustrating a lot of times is the useless keywords that I get with other keyword tools.

Ben has somehow created a good algorithm that excludes the useless keywords. Keywords like localized and eCommerce ones:

best pizza near me / best pizza within 50 miles
golf clubs amazon

Those types of keywords are aplenty and get annoying to delete.

The platform is still early, but it does what it's supposed to very well.

Sign up and get the 1,000 Free credits now while you can at KeywordChef.com

Finally - a simple keyword discovery tool built for publishers. Let's face it, most keyword tools suck. They are bloated, confusing, and overpriced. They are cluttered with meaningless metrics, junk keywords, and inaccurate data. Keyword Chef fixes all that. Keyword Chef was built for publishers, by publishers. That's why every keyword we find has real search intent. We understand it's not quantity, but quality keywords that publishers can easily target and rank. So sit back, hit search, and let the magic happen.

Content

How To Create A Content Strategy Based On Keywords

If you read my Keyword Research dissertation, remember how I said I'd talk about how I do content strategy/planning together with keywords?

Well, I told Matthew Woodward to shoot a short video on explaining my strategy, and he did.

Okay, not really, but his video is very similar to what I do already with keyword research and content planning.

He also goes into looking at the SERPs and discusses the Keyword Cannibalization section that I added last week.

He has his own spreadsheet he uses and gives his students, but you can get mine for free. By signing up for the Niche Surfer newsletter, you should've received the link. If not, let me know.

Evergreen Content Myths & How to Keep It Alive Longer

Evergreen doesn’t mean immortal; it just means lower maintenance than timely content.

Evergreen content is something people should stop using, because nothing is evergreen when it comes to affiliate sites and SEO.

As long as Google continues to update its algorithm, site owners should continue to analyze and optimize their content.

The article is a good look at how you should be treating content and updates.

Link Building

The Ultimate Guide to Broken Links

One of the worst things to have on your site - Broken Links.

One of the easiest things to fix on your site - Broken Links.

Do a site audit periodically and look for broken links. We all make mistakes and I've caught these simple one-letter-off mistakes before, which leads users (and Googlebot) to non-existent pages. That's bad user experience.

User experience is an important part to a successful affiliate site. The better the UX, the more you'll convert, which means more money in your pockets.

There are plenty of apps and platforms you can use for free to check for broken links - Sitebulb (this article), Screaming Frog, Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, etc.

For Amazon Affiliate sites, there are also platforms that specifically check for wrong affiliate tags, live product pages, out-of-stock products - AMZ Watcher and Site Buddy

Links help Google discover new pages. Sure they have other ways of discovering URLs, like XML sitemaps and external links - but they love internal links.

Education

Learning SEO - A Roadmap with Free SEO Resources

This is a great collection of Free resources to learn SEO from - curated by Aleyda Solís.

If money's tight and you're unable to get one of the paid online courses, this is a great course that you can follow to learn more about SEO.

There are some sections that are much more technical for people who want to be SEOs, but there's still a lot of great educational material to help with affiliate websites.

7 Emerging Technologies in SEO and Their Applications

New SEO technologies is always an interesting topic. Moz goes through 7 of them:

Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Natural Language Generation (NLG) for short-form content
Term Frequency times Inverse Document Frequency (TF*IDF )
GPT-3 for automated content creation
SEO A/B testing
Automated on-page content optimization
Non-text content factors

I've been testing out a lot of the AI content generation lately to see just how good they are. Unfortunately, none are ready for real use when it comes to articles on affiliate sites. At least my affiliate sites.

Good content converts and I just never got enough out of the generators that convinced me they'd convert. The key is whether the content converts your users to click an affiliate link or to stay on the page for more ad revenue.

If you need short 1-3 sentence content, then these AI generators can work pretty well. You'll still want to proofread, but you'll get all the fluff you can handle.

The better ones I've tested and you may want to test:

Nichesss - Lifetime Deal available
Headlime - Monthly
Copysmith.ai - Lifetime Deal available
Copy.ai - Monthly

I've tried a few others, but didn't like the output from them. Even for shorter copy. Any of the above should be decent for generating short copy to use on social media, landing pages, etc.

One note on GPT-3 and blog posts. OpenAI doesn't allow lengthy content creation, so no platform can offer GPT-3 written blog posts, if that's what you're looking for. Any company that says they have AI blog post generation, it's because they created their own AI.

Copysmith has their own AI that's in Beta for blog post generation, but it's more like an Alpha. I've talked with their CTO and they just haven't fed it enough data to be worth using for blog posts.

If you do want to try it out yourself, you'll want to look for free trials or ability to refund easily. All four of them do and are.

The Pros And Cons Of Selling Privately

I've started to look into selling one of my sites to give myself some financial flexibility. One of the things I'm considering is whether I sell with a broker or if I do it privately.

I've purchased sites privately and through Motion Invest, but this would be the first time I'm selling. For the amount of money I'd be looking for, I'm leaning towards going with a broker.

If you're also thinking about selling your site, this is a good article by Dom Wells at Onfolio. Dom discusses the pros and cons of selling privately and through a broker.

Case Study

Unorthodox Link Building with HARO & Wikipedia [Case Study]

Matt Diggity continues his Project Cashflow cast study with Month 3:

Two more outside-the-box link building tactics

Advanced E-A-T optimization

Breadcrumb navigation and structured data

and much, much more.

Some interesting stuff in there this month. The outside-the-box link building isn't really outside if you've been around the game for a minute - HARO and Wikipedia. What was interesting was the note that Neil Patel's Wikipedia page was deleted.

The other things like Breadcrumbs and E-A-T are definitely good to implement. I only implemented them a few months ago myself. GeneratePress doesn't have built-in breadcrumbs, so I had to manually add them, but it wasn't too hard.

If you're interested in learning how, let me know and if there's enough people, I'll write a tutorial. I use RankMath and GeneratePress Premium Hooks

News

LinkedIn is Reportedly Creating a Service For Hiring Freelancers

LinkedIn Marketplaces is going to compete directly with Fiverr and Upwork starting as soon as September.

This is actually a great move for LinkedIn and for us publishers. It'll be easier to find and vet freelancers than on either Fiverr or Upwork.

Marketplaces, which is supposed to launch in September, will focus on white-collar jobs in fields like design, marketing, and software development. Employers would be able to use the service to compare the rates of individual freelancers and the kind of work they offer.

Marketplaces is expected to blend features from both competitors. It will let businesses shop for freelancers and compare rates, similar to Fiverr, while employers will be able to post their own proposals to freelancers, similar to Upwork.